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I put my Dell laptop (win7 64 bit OEM) to sleep last night, this morning it just froze so I used the power button to restart. When it got to the desktop, the shortcut icons loaded but then the cursor went into a continuous spinning circle. Nothing happens when I clicked on the window icon on lower left and the start menu would not show. Also no response when I clicked on any of the shortcut icons. The only way out is to force shut with the power button

I went to safe mode and ran ESET, malwarebytes and Avast Free, no problem. Chkdsk and memtest are all ok. I have not made any changes or added any new programs the last few days.

I can see all my files in safe mode but cannot open any of them, as a test I used a USB stick to transfer a few photo files to an old laptop and they all looked intact.

Tried to use system restore but to my shock it said no restore points, I'm sure that's not how I set it up. I also tried using "repair computer" that is accessed from F8 but it just hung for like 30 mins. I already spent hours looking for solutions online but haven't come across anything.

I'm not computer saavy, please help, what is happening? Thank you very much

In the long run, I recommend Hybernate or Shutdown. If there were some important OPs running in the background at the time of Sleep-invoking, I'm wondering if such got "gummed up." I think Hybernate, like Shutdown, stops any/all running processes & services & whatknots just before creating the Hybernation File.
I take it you already F8 booted and tried "Last Known Good Configuration" option? It's possible you can do a Start Repair from your OEM or MS blue-disk CD/DVD; if no CD/DVD, on another computer with same-bit Windows, you can create a USB boot-stick w/necessary Start Repair.

RolandJS, I just tried "last good configuration", it did the same thing, ie the non-stop spinning circle. The only disc I could find is the "drivers and utilities stored on your computer", if I remember correctly Dell never supplied any win7 disc.

Does this sound like a windows or hard drive issue? Since my laptop is 3 years old, I'll probably have to get a new one rather than replacing the hard drive. Thanks

P.S. I forgot to mention I deleted Avast after reading it created similar problem for someone, but unfortunately didn't help me

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